KAMALIKA PIERIS

The Tamil Separatist Movement has met the claims of the Buddhists, by issuing a counter statement which is a mirror image of what the Buddhists are saying.  Buddhists say that Buddhists was there in the north and east before the Tamils. The Buddhists built the Buddhist monuments. Then these monuments were destroyed by Tamils who settled there. Tamil Separatist Movement says Hinduism was in the north and east long before Buddhism. Sinhala Buddhists came later, destroyed the Hindu temples and set up the Buddhist sites that are seen there today.

Tamil Separatist Movement also put forward a second argument, that the Tamils in the north- east were initially Buddhist. Tamil Buddhists were there in Sri Lanka from the very ancient past, they said. The Buddhist ruins found in the north and east were the remains of Buddhist monuments built by Tamil Buddhists.  Later the Tamils gave up Buddhism and embraced Hinduism.

This argument went further, it said that   these Tamil Buddhists   were Mahayana as well as Theravada. The   Mahayana group  had their own temples in the north and east. There are still some Tamil Mahayana Buddhist establishments  in the east and possibly in the Jaffna peninsula,  said J.L. Devananda. This  fabrication was concocted because the East Coast has many Mahayana temples, such as Tiriyaya and it was necessary to show that those temples  were also Tamil.

The Sinhala  Buddhists,  on the other hand, were not so advanced. Sinhala Buddhists never became   Mahayana. They  incorporated  Mahayana gods and beliefs into  their practices, but the doctrine remained Theravada. The Mahayana temples along the East Coast  followed this principle.

Tamil Separatist Movement then went on to  criticize Sinhala thinking on the matter. The impression among the Sinhalese Buddhists is that Buddhism in Sri Lanka is exclusively for the Sinhalese . There seems to be an unwillingness to accept that Tamils too were Buddhists in an earlier era.  Why do the Sri Lankans believe that the Buddhist sites in Sri Lanka belong only to the Sinhalese  and not to the Tamils, asked J.L.Devananda. [1]

 Tamil Separatist Movement then turned on  the Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa  .Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa  were criticized on two counts. Both charges were fabricated ones. Firstly, that Buddhism flourished in South India in ancient times, but Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa remained silent about the introduction of Buddhism to South India.

 This is because, continued Tamil Separatist Movement, when Hindu/Brahmanism started reappearing in India and posed a threat to Buddhism, the Mahavihara monks, in order to  protect Buddhism in Sri Lanka , wrote the Pali chronicles Dipavamsa/Mahavamsa just to glorify Buddhism and the Buddhist kings of Sri Lanka and not to record objectively what happened.

Secondly,  Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa created the  Sinhala ethnic identity , yoked it to Buddhism and created a new ethno-religious identity in Sri Lanka known as Sinhala-Buddhist, to sustain the religion in the country for 5000 years, said the Tamil Separatist Movement, using its imagination.

 Tamil Separatist Movement also said that the ancient Sri Lankan Kingdom (Anuradhapura) was ruled by both Buddhist and Hindu kings. There is no evidence what so ever to prove that they were Sinhala, said  Tamil Separatist Movement ,  ignoring  the fact that there is no evidence to prove that they were Tamil either.

The  Buddhist past is unpleasant to many Tamils today, said  the Tamil Separatist Movement . The Tamils are reluctant to admit the reality that their ancestors had been Buddhists in the past. Today most Tamils in Sri Lanka are Hindu or Christian.

Further, the present Tamil speaking occupants of the lands in the North and East are uneasy about the discovery of Buddhist sites, admitted the Tamil Separatist Movement . That  is because these discoveries strengthen the case for Sinhala-Buddhism in the  north and east, said critics.

There is absolutely no evidence to show that Sri Lanka  was ruled by Tamil kings, but   there is plenty of  tangible evidence to show that Sri Lanka was ruled by Sinhala kings, said  critics. This evidence starts with the  Anuradhapura kingdom and  continues unbroken  up to  the Udarata  kingdom. Further, the Sinhala kings created a strong, stable monarchical state, which was recognized internationally, by India,  China, Iran and other countries.

There is an abundance of such evidence,  not just a fragment or two, continued critics. There are thousands of stone inscriptions , also   sculptures,   large  monuments, irrigation schemes and a vast literature which includes histories  and commentaries

Not only is the evidence there in abundance, it keeps on  arriving. There is  a continuous run of discoveries. The chief priest of a kovil, had come across the ruins  of a Buddhist temple and some Buddha statues, stone carvings as well as a Bo tree when he was clearing the jungle in Kilinochchi, reported Daily News  in 1965.[2]

 The  torso of a  Buddha statue, was found at Pulmoddai some miles away from the  Mineral factory , said the Handbook for the Ceylon Traveler , in 1974.[3]  A standing Buddha statue 7 ½ feet in height was found at Mannar, said E.T Kannangara in 1984. [4] During our work for Mahaweli , north of Kala Weva,  in every jungle area we saw very old small Buddhist temples with  the Buduge in caves, said Randeniyage. [5]

 800 new Sigiri graffiti dated to7th to 13th Centuries were found by Benille Priyanka  and published in 2010. A Buddha statue dated to Anuradhapura   era was found in Kantale  in 2012.[6] A large number of archaeological remains were found at Arisimale beach , Pulmoddai in 2017. [7] A huge inscription was found in 2023 at Dimbulagala Aranya Senasana.

There is also another new stunt  that the Anti Sinhala-Buddhist Movement, is attempting which locks in nicely with  Eelam. The Anti Sinhala Movement says that   the Sinhala-Buddhist history is all bogus, it is a figment of the imagination,  it  is a  Sinhala Buddhist Imaginary.”

Elizabeth Harris  provides us with a description of this   Imaginary”.  She  says that there is a Sinhala  Imaginary” that  sees  the entire island as belonging to the Sinhala people. This Imaginary” sees the island as  belonging to both Buddha and the Sinhala people. The island was the dream land of the Buddha himself. That is  why there is Sinhala attachment to Sri Lanka, said Harris.[8]

The Sinhala-Buddhist history of ancient Sri Lanka was  an invention of the British rulers, continued Harris. The ancient cities of Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa and Sigiriya,  so important for the Sinhala imagination,  were nineteenth century  inventions. They were created by the British colonial officers and amateur archaeologists’. They were not known before. They gained prominence only when the European gaze fell on them, said Harris.

Anuradhapura’s  ‘ancientness” is a modern, colonial  invention continued Harris. The Buddhist pilgrimages to  Buddhist places of worship was part of an Imaginary that pictured those sites as part of a larger island-wide Buddhist drama. The area around the Bodhi tree, (she means the  Sri Maha Bodhi in Anuradhapura ),  was all but deserted for centuries until it was reclaimed in the British colonial period, concluded Harris.    

Elizabeth J. Harris studied English for her first degree. . After teaching English in Jamaica, she  took up a position  at Christians Abroad  in  UK and became involved in inter-religious groups in London . She worked as the Inter Faith Officer for the Methodist Church in Britain.

 After becoming involved with my local interfaith group in London, I went to Sri Lanka to study Buddhism on a World Council of Churches scholarship, said Harris.  She was in Sri Lanka from 1986 to 1993 and obtained a Ph.D. degree from the Postgraduate Institute of Pali and Buddhist Studies, University of Kelaniya, mentored by some wonderful people, including Dr Aloysius Pieris  .

Harris  has  worked  in several universities  including  Lund University, Liverpool Hope University, and  Westminster College . She was  Oxford Honorary Senior Research Fellow within the Edward Cadbury Centre for the Public Understanding of Religion, University of Birmingham. Harris was President of the UK Association for Buddhist Studies.  She has been a trustee of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland” and also Secretary for Inter-faith Relations in the Methodist Church in London.

 We now return to  our topic, which is the  Imaginary. This novel approach to Sinhala-Buddhism as an Imaginary” will infuriate Buddhists when they get to hear of it. It is outrageous certainly,   but  those with a sense of humor will consider it  hilarious too.

It is also unethical.  History is a  respected academic  discipline which fills a  cultural need in society. There are  ethics in the writing of history, also standards and controls. There is such a thing as historical accuracy. This is  difficult to achieve  in ancient and medieval histories, but not impossible.   Distorting the  history of a  country, deliberately and with a  political purpose,  should be treated as a matterfor the courtsof law. There is a  legal  precedent , see the   law on Holocaust . There is also  discussion going on  today  in USA on how to  interpret the American Civil War.

This Anti-Sinhala Movement glibly argues that it is the British who gave the Sinhalese their history.   The Sinhalese did not even  know that they had a history till  the British told them, they said. This is nonsense.

 It is the other way round. British administration acted on  information from the natives. For instance, The British could not have discovered the Mahavamsa on their own.. The Sinhalese  would have  spoken about the Mahavamsa  to the British. It was held in  temple libraries and in private collections. It was known to the Sinhalese.  About five copies of  Mahavamsa  were found in  personal collections in 1933 by the Historical Manuscripts Commission.

The same goes for archaeology .The suggestion that the British found archaeological  monuments and presented them to the Sinhalese, is   absurd. The British administration did not posses divine vision. The natives would have directed the British administrators  to the sites , which were in thick jungle.  Villagers living close by would have informed their superiors and the information would have gone up the grape vine  to the  top officials. The facilities for excavating and conserving the  ancient monuments was   exclusively in the hands of the British administration .The  Sinhala intelligentsia would  have  wished to   utilize this and get their  monuments restored.

It was not only the Sangha who were history conscious ,the intelligentsia   who lived in the British period,  also valued   history and  preserved  historical documents. Henry Marshall ( 1776-1841) who was an administrator in British Ceylon, said the Sinhalese have many books , (he meant olas), in verse and prose on many subjects. These book collections  included a very complete history of the kings of Ceylon.”

The findings of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, established in 1931, supports this. [9]The commission found that temple libraries had  manuscripts on the history of the island.  Nagolle vihara library, searched in 1933, had a copy of Mahavamsa  and Maha Bodhivamsa.  Yapahuwa temple had an ola with the dates of the coronation of deaths of kings and other important events in the life of the Udarata kings.

Other manuscripts found in temple libraries were: three copies of a history of Ceylon including the Udarata kings, a manuscript on history of Vijaya’s arrival, a kadaimpota containing a historical narrative of Sinhala kings from Vijaya,  a vittipota with kings from Vijaya to Kirti Sri, containing also the names of cities in which the ministers of Vijaya lived and names of the chiefs who were given grants of village by kings up to Rajasinha I  and a historical narrative of Sinhalese kings from Vijaya to Parakrama bahu containing names of places in several parts of the island and their boundaries.

The Historical Manuscript Commission also found in temple libraries two manuscripts describing battles between Sri Wickrema and the British  and one giving dates of the death of Udarata kings, such as Kirti Sri Rajasinghe.  A manuscript giving the exact dates and hours of death of Wimaladharmasuriya II, Kirti Sri, Rajadhi and other kings was found at Polgahawela. There were notes in Sinhala attached.  one  manuscript on history of the vihara at Gunadahe in Tumpane from time of Vikramabahu   and  several manuscripts dealing with the place names  within the three divisions of the island, Ruhunu, Maya, and Pihiti.

Historical Manuscripts Commission  (1933) found many historical manuscripts in personal collections of the Sinhalese. They found histories of Ceylon up to the Kandyan kings, inclusive,  and many copies of Kurunegala vistaraya ,about five copies of  Mahavamsa  and a 19 century copy of the  Dipavamsa.  Also Rajalekhanaya”, which had the chronology of  the kings of Ceylon  and the Matale Maha Disava lekam Pota  which had a  historical and statistical account of Sri Lanka in time of Rajasinha II .

The Commission found the following manuscripts in the large Mahavalatenne collection at Balangoda.   ‘Manuvamsa ‘ giving the names of the kings of Ceylon and the period they reigned, ‘Rajavaliya’, ‘Lanka kadaimpota,’ and a list of king up to Buvanekhabahu VI.

T.W. Maralande, Ratemahatmaya  had in his collection  copies of Kurunegala vistaraya,” Dambadeni asna,’  a kadaimpota with  the story of Vijaya,  an account of Sri Wickrema Rajasinghe,  an account of  the revolt by Daskon disawa against  king Wimaladharmasuriya  II  and a manuscript of 72 leaves on Kira valiya or Bandara valiya. Jinatissa Madawela  owned 2 copies of  Rajavaliya,  3 of  Kurunegala vistaraya. A personal collection at Talgodapitiya, yielded vittipota, Bandara valiya, Vijaya Rajavaliya.

Historical Manuscripts Commission found at Padiyapelalla, a kadaimpota of 14 century, on Ruhunu, Maya, Pihiti with names of subdivision, the ratas, Kelaniya, Panadura, Dambadeniya and so on.  At Polgahawela they found  a manuscript giving the exact dates and hours of death of Rajadhi, Wimaladharmasuriya II,  Kirti Sri Rajasinghe and subsequent  kings, with   notes  written in Sinhala. ( Continued)

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[1]  JLDevananda https://thuppahis.com/2020/02/28/the-tamil-buddhists-of-the-anuradhapura-civilization .

[2] Daily News on  5.6.14 p 3

[3] Handbook for the Ceylon Traveller, Studio times, 1974 p    113

[4] ET Kannangara. Jaffna and the Sinhala heritage. P 21..

[5] Comment on  Hindu Invasion of Okanda Dewalaya Lankaweb. August 31st, 2019 

[6] Island  4.5.12 p 5  .

[7] Daily News Travel suppl. 20.7.17 p 14 .

[8] Elizabeth  Harris  Religions , Space and Conflict in Sri Lanka.

[9] 1st report of the Historical Manuscripts Commision.1933 SP 9 of 1933

   3rd report of Historical Manuscripts Commission 1951, SP 19 of 1951